First Light Festival, a presentation of new works at the Ensemble Studio Theatre

Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation proudly announce the 10th annual First Light Festival, running at the Ensemble Studio Theatre from 11 Apr - 3 May 2008.

First Light Festival 2008 is a presentation of new works commissioned by the EST/Sloan Project, an initiative designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.

Now in its tenth season, The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project has premiered over 100 plays, dance and performance pieces, selected from proposals and submissions from around the country. Each season the EST/Sloan Project commissions and develops new works, and presents the results, at various stages from first readings to fully mounted productions, in the First Light Festival.

The festival will present the following Workshops.

• Pure
  Playwright: Rey Pamatmat
  Director: Talvin Wilks
  Synopsis Alan Turing - inventor of the computer, war hero, and convicted homosexual - has moments to choose: live a secret life in post-WWII England or the complete his life's work somewhere beyond life itself.
  Date: Fri 11 Apr

• Case Study
  Playwright: Amy Fox
  Director: William Carden
  Synopsis: A young researcher into Sudden Infant Death Syndrome investigates a mother who has lost four children.
  Date: Fri 18 Apr

• ADA
  Score: Kim Sherman
  Book & Lrics: Margaret Vandenburg
  Director: Lisa Rothe
  Synopsis: An opera on the life of Ada Byron, daughter of the famous poet and the inventor of the world's first computer.
  Date: Fri 25 Apr

• The Flower Hunter
  Playwright: Romulus Linney
  Director: Jamie Richards
  Synopsis: The journey of discovery by William Bartram, America's first botanist. Bartram ventures into the uncharted south to document the region's wildlife and on the way realizes his own life's purpose.
  Date: Thu 1 May

The following concert reading is being presented as a special event at the festival:

• The Physicists
  Playwright: Friedrich Durrenmatt
  Director: Jamie Richards
  Cast: James Rebhorn, Laurence Luckinbill and Peter Maloney.
  Synopsis: A story of atomic espionage.
  Date: Sat 3 May